


A City Walled By War

by DemonBlade



Series: Ficlets of the Powers [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24392605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonBlade/pseuds/DemonBlade
Series: Ficlets of the Powers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1761346
Kudos: 1





	A City Walled By War

A city surrounded by war. A never-ending cacophony of warfare.

An infinite orchestra of gunfire.

A sleepless siren singing, not the harmonious tones of the tempting sea vixen but the nerve wreaking, spine-tingling tune of the broken and dying soldiers.

The people between the walls which seemed to scrape along the sky know nothing of the war besides the hail of bullets, the screaming of the injured, and the nonsensical gibberish orders shouted by the commanders.

There were scholars who studied the war beyond the walls. Some thought that they could tell time or predict the future by its shifts and turns. Some worked to predict its cause and forces.

Most did their best to ignore it.

They were used to so many things in life. But no one got used to the war.

They live their entire lives within earshot, but they never find the heart to tune out the soldier’s dying cries.

The leader never talked about the war. That was constant. If one were to ask the government, the war doesn’t exist. It is in no book, it is mentioned in no speech, it is written nowhere.

There are no soldiers in the walls. No armies. No draft. No one entered the military. In fact just like the war, none of those exist. How you learned what they were no one could say. Maybe it is simply instinct at this point, maybe you heard it enough that you just know it, more likely it is something altogether worse.

The war did stop, once. Many years ago, back when the oldest in the walls were young. They say the world went silent for one day. Everyone was so scared they didn’t leave their homes.

When the first shots rang out the next morning we all sighed a collective sigh of relief, and we all stiffened up in our normal and comfortable fear.

How does one sleep with cannons and guns and blades singing through the night? You don’t. No one really does. Sleep is what you tell yourself you are doing as you lay for 7 hours each night with your eyes closed and your ears open.

Knowing that the war will be upon you any second, though it never comes, you listen to the screams and the moans in the darkness, so loud they sound as if the dying soldiers have piled outside your windows and doors begging your help.

You imagine what you will sound like when the war kills you. Will you? Will you die? How long has it been since someone died? Have any babies been born? Little Tobby is just 6 months old yet you cannot claim to have witnessed his birth. You do not remember his mother’s pregnancy. You do not remember his father. Maybe you were too focused on the war.

Yes. That’s it. The war.

The agony and horror of your enemies faces. The scream torn from your lips as a bayonet finds its mark in your shoulder. The deafening shot of your musket beheading the soldier in front of you. The pounding of your boots, not on earth or mud or rock or metal, but the hideous squelching softness as you run across the bodies of the soldiers. Hundreds deep and soaked through with their own blood.

You cannot see the horizon. Only the next soldier. You put a blade through its throat as you scream. Pain? Glee? Fear? You don’t know. It is unimportant. As pointless as the gaping hole from the bayonet. As pointless as the bayonet still hanging limply from your shoulder. As unimportant as the blood pouring from the wound as you slowly die on your feet.

You are still screaming.

You are still moaning.

You are dying and killing and all the while wondering what you are fighting.

What is the cause? What is beyond that wall? What lies within that towering wall?

You seem so close to its top.

How far is it? Not much further now.

Till what?

You scream louder than any before and you dye choking on blood and pierced with shrapnel riddled with bullet casings and arrows and blades. Bones broken and eyes unfocused. You realise you are missing your jaw and you continue to scream. The bodies pile atop you. You sink as the war rises. Rises to meet the sky. Rises to the end of infinity.


End file.
